Mayo Schmidt spent a couple of weeks this fall hiking in the mountains of Alaska.
He competes in ironman triathlons and is often spotted running around Regina’s Wascana Lake.
At 50, the chief executive officer of Viterra Inc. knows the importance of staying in shape and challenging himself.
It’s the same in the business world.
“The first thing that comes to the top is his tremendous singleness of purpose,” Viterra board chair Terry Baker said about Schmidt.
“He sets high goals for himself personally and the people he works with, and within reason he does not compromise those goals. As long as it is possible, it will get done.”
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After assuming the helm of the nearly bankrupt Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in January 2000 and steering it toward becoming the largest grain handler in Canada, Schmidt’s course now seems correct.
At the start, it was just painful.
Schmidt, who grew up in Kansas, had obtained a degree in business administration and had worked for General Mills. He was hired away from ConAgra about six months after the Pool’s board fired its previous CEO.
The company had become unwieldy, unfocused and unprofitable.
Schmidt took an axe to it.
He sold associated companies that were making money and hung onto the grain handling facilities that were losing money, causing some to wonder about his strategy.
“It sounds corny but he is a man of vision,” Baker said.
That vision was a company that would focus on its core of grain handling and agriproduct sales. The proceeds from selling the profitable companies would pay down debt and strengthen the Pool’s balance sheet.
In the end, the Pool closed 335 wooden elevators and 88 other service outlets and rid itself of 29 companies. The workforce was cut by more than half, to 1,600 from 3,400.
The company emerged from restructuring with its financial goals realized and a single class of voting shares that eliminated the Pool’s
co-operative status.
Still, Schmidt predicted further change, saying there was too much grain handling capacity. There was talk that the Pool might be a takeover target, perhaps by an American company.
But Schmidt and the Pool shocked many with the November 2006 takeover bid for the much larger Agricore United, a move that was successful in May 2007.
Even on the day that Viterra was unveiled as the new company’s name, Schmidt was talking about perhaps acquiring American companies or new partnerships that could enhance Viterra’s bottom line.
“He’s a pleasure to work with because he does have all these pots boiling in the background,” Baker said.
“It’s important for a leader to always have a collection of things (on the go). He leads by example.”
Schmidt has been recognized for his leadership. Financial Post Business magazine recently ranked him 147th in its list of the top 200 CEOs in Canada. The ranking was based on the company’s three-year rate of return of 37.4 percent.
The magazine also determined that his “Bang for the Buck” rating is $1.20, meaning he was underpaid about 20 percent even while earning $3.3 million in 2006.
